Cormac wrote:Beatsong wrote:Cormac wrote:Redistribution of wealth is a very poorly defined term. I detest it, because it is so wooly. It can mean anything from a tiny sales tax to a 100% income tax. It also implies that there is no private property and that the state owns everything.
No it doesn't. Not unless you're incapable of recognising any number between zero and infinity.
It means that if property is only held at the absolute whim of the state, then private property is non-existent.
In Ireland, we have compulsory purchase orders, to divest private property. This is how we balance private property rights with the needs of the community.These orders are subject to a strict process and are subject to judicial review. This means that the state does not have control over private assets.
Other countries are not necessarily like this.
Where assets can be arbitrarily removed from private hands, then there is no such thing as private property.
Who said anything about "arbitrarily"? The very point you raise proves my point - that there is a vast area of
limited and contingent rights for the state to redistribute wealth in between absolute zero and absolute infinity. That's how most western countries work. It's what all state funded education effectively is, just to give one example.
Of course there's another issue as well, which is that private property DOES only exist at the whim of the "state" - if you take "state" to mean the entire collective discourse and agreement of those whose lives affect your own, rather than just a bunch of stormtroopers imposing the will of Government HQ. The fact is that property itself only exists as a concept through the interaction and agreement of the property holder, and the property
non-holders who agree to respect that property-holder's right. This is not a question of my morality or preference, it's a matter of simple social and historical fact. In any situation where a critical mass of people decide to no longer respect a particular property holder's right - such as when one country is invaded by another, or during complete social breakdown and revolution - they simply do so and take the property. They are then the property holders and it becomes their "right". It's that arbitrary. (Even more arbitrary in Seth-world, where they are perfectly entitled to do so if they are Europeans invading native Americans, but not if they are half-Kenyans imposing a tax on someone called "Seth"
But I digress.)
An animal eating something and trying to beat off other animals from taking it doesn't have "property" in any meaningful human sense. They have their own
will to exclusive use of something, but those other animals have their own will as well and that's all there is to a description of the situation. If one wins, it wins. If the other wins, then it wins. There is no morality, agreement or breach of contract involved, nothing connected with what we call "property".
The moment you try to talk about property as having any moral or socio-political basis at all - as anything to do with what
should be, or how people
should act, rather than what simply
is - then you are talking about not just the assertion of exclusive use, but also the agreement of others to recognise that assertion. As such, property rights only exist by the agreement of the state (ie, "others").
